The existential lightness of being a videogame character
On TikTok, creator Nyane creates videos watched by millions where she displays makeup, skincare, and clothes as if she were a video game character to dress up and prep. In videos called “Let’s do my Makeup,” we go into each step, with a couple of options each time: foundation (“huh!”), concealer, bronzer, brush (“pretty!”), fake eyelashes (“yeah…”), eyeliner, lipstick (“no… pretty, I like it!”)…
Videogames used to copy our world, now our world copies videogame characters
It’s soothing and fascinating to watch, and I caught myself wishing: “If only preparing myself in the morning were so easy…” She only has a couple of choices for each item, and the changes are instantaneous. Still, putting convenience aside, there is something eerily attractive about being a mere character in a videogame: the environment is controlled, the possibilities are drastically finite, and you’re not even making the choices. Some deity, the player above you, is choosing for you. And there is a “good” choice and a “bad” choice, according to how your avatar will react. Of course, the Y2K aesthetic does help: who remembers Ma Bimbo in France or Bimboland in the United States? Life looked easier when we were younger. Being a grown woman, according to my younger self, meant you had the freedom to choose your glossy makeup and colorful outfit. I didn’t know, then, that freedom having to make a choice about… everything.
Videogames simplify the world for technological and gameplay reasons and not existential ones. It would be too energy-intensive for game developers to build an exact copy of our experiences. Yes, in the Sims 4, a life simulation, you can buy additional content and customizations to add things from real life, like murder or MAC makeup. Then, your computer will noisily overheat on your lap from all these additions, showing how adding complexity to life also adds pain and discomfort. But still, the game is built around the idea that you stack actions in chronological order to fulfill your Sim’s needs (sleep, nutrition, entertainment, social life…) according to simple personality traits and more profound long-term dreams. Not only does the game simplify the number of choices, it also simplifies what life looks like: you have a bunch of meters tracking pragmatic needs, and for more existential ones, you choose one big goal, like “bestselling author”, that is then divided into intermediate actions by the game: “Write for an Hour While Inspired”, “Reach Level 4 in the Writing Skill”, “Write 5 Good Books”… Being a bestselling author sounds way easier that way!
Living like you’re a sim: Gamifying Habits and existential goals
In a TikTok called“Living like a Sim,” Diversion’s founder explains how she sometimes imagines herself as a Sim she has to take care of. This helps her in many ways. Because of her ADHD, she can occasionally forget to do the simplest tasks, like eat, sleep, or take a shower altogether, and visualizing her basic needs is a must to take care of herself despite her disorder. Gamification is another reason: making tasks satisfying and entertaining by ticking boxes on Notion pages is just a way to recreate the Sim gameplay but for her real life.
She gives two other reasons that caught my attention. First: “It’s simple and logical when it’s a game, and it is just the same for yourself.” Compared to a videogame, life seems extremely complicated. I’ve talked about the unlimited arborescence of choices, but life is full of illogical consequences and events while games usually have very simple cause-to-consequence logic. Games make sense, but life usually doesn’t. Reducing life to a simple video game makes it more manageable.
But what happens when video games become increasingly lifelike? Recently, the Sims 4 added a feature (whether it was a bug or a feature, I’m not entirely sure). Sims seemed to become “sad” out of nowhere because of their“unfulfilled dreams,” even if the player had fulfilled as many dreams as possible. The Sims just seemed to get the blues out of nowhere, even if their life was perfect. And nothing seemed to work! I think the Sims 4 developers decided to make the game a bit too faithful to a simulation, and that left a bad taste in many players’ mouths, who relied on the game as a coping mechanism for the uncertainty of their lives and their existential blues. We want cute outfits, not chronic anxiety.
The second idea was also surprisingly profound: “Taking care of someone else is sometimes easier than taking care of yourself.” You know how you give the best advice to your friends, only to display the worst behaviors yourself? Yeah, that’s it. Imagining yourself as a different entity you have full power over helps visualize your free will, especially as you grow some fondness for your digital avatar. Recently, I had ChatGPT act as a fitness coach to plan my meals and exercise for the week, and it has been, so far, very effective. Now the computer is telling me, the human, what to do. Oh, how we have come full circle…
Also, I remember vividly being mad at a Sim for playing video games for hours instead of going out or working on their skills, only to find myself playing the Sims 4 for hours instead of living my oh-too-real life and not working on developing my skills. The irony hit me, and I got myself out of the house. I have actually stopped playing the Sims 4 for a year now, but perhaps I’ll start a new game… for research.
NPCs everywhere, main character syndrome: the dark side of this practice
A month ago, I heard someone describing a person as so predictable that they could tell, hour by hour, where they were and what they were doing. The predictability of the person made them not only boring but barely human as if no interior monologue and no dilemma could emerge from that very regular life. This made me think of people online talking about the people around them as “NPCs” or Non-Playable Characters. Some TikTok users started using “NPC” as an insult, as they believe they themselves are the main characters, living through a wide variety of choices for outfits, personality traits, actions, or quests. In contrast, most people around them act as if simpler codes programmed them, mere NPCs. Again, being empathetic to strangers is complicated, while NPCs are simple. It is true it can be overwhelming to be in a crowd and to think just for a moment that all the people around us have a back story, emotions, dilemmas, and a future. But it is massively pretentious to believe we are superior to “the others” based just on the difficulty of imagining that others have their own character arcs, too!
Video games help us think about the chaos around us because they make it simpler and more measurable. Videogames are a more straightforward and more understandable world for us just because of the constraint of the medium: videogame developers can’t compute every tiny variation we see in the world, and sometimes, we need life to be simpler. This mental exercise is, at least for me, a good tool for habit-building. However, when this train of thought simplifies empathy or makes us believe, like Elon Musk, that we live in a Matrix-like simulation, I think it’s better to shut down your computer and touch grass.
👋 Hello! I am Léa, a French podcaster, blogger, and freelance marketing consultant. I help startups and entrepreneurs with their marketing and social media strategy.
